Leaving Here In Misery
by Dan Sickles
Summary: Tom is finally fed up, and he has a few things to tell Summer! This is a tribute to Ringo, and to a little movie called BRICK, also starring the incredibly talented Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Rated T for language.


LEAVING HERE IN MISERY

_I'm not a big fan of this movie, but here is my impression of how it should have ended. Please comment nicely!_

Little moments started Tom thinking. Little moments in his day by day love for Summer. Like the time she sent him out for ice cream and he came back and found her in bed with the entire defensive line of the Los Angeles Rams. Or the time Summer promised to make him a birthday cake and then just sprayed Kool-whip over the crusts in an old pizza box she found under his bed.

"I need answers," Tom said to himself. "But I can't do all the thinking on my own. Not while I'm playing a dumb wuss who works at a greeting card company. I need to forget I'm in a puke-worthy chick flick. I need to pretend I'm a tough detective in an incredibly cool and violent teen drama. Then I need to go out behind the cafeteria and talk to . . . the Brain."

"Brain," Tom said. "I'm going with a girl who lies and cheats. She has no heart. Yet she claims her favorite Beatle is Ringo. What's the deal?"

"Well, you know Brandon, I mean Tom, Ringo can be a lot of things. Ringo is complicated." The small boy in the thick horn-rimmed glasses didn't even pause. He snapped his Rubik's cube into perfect order first. Then he looked up.

"Odds are the girl is a narcissist."

Tom was amused. "Because she likes Ringo?"

The nerdy whiz-kid counted off key facts on his fingers. "Ringo is the ugly Beatle. The loser Beatle. Summer is trying to get outsider credibility without really deserving it. If she said she liked John she'd have to challenge authority or take some kind of significant political risk to back it up. Paul, she'd have to love someone else when she's already in love with herself. And George is too sincere, a seeker, but not for material things. Liking him would give away the fact that she has no soul. The contrast would reveal too much about who she really is, a totally unfeeling narcissist."

"Got it." Tom felt better already. He was starting to understand the level of dishonesty he was up against. "I'm going to throw some words at you. Tell me if they catch."

"Shoot."

"Affectation."

"Ah," the Brain said. "Liking Ringo could be an affectation. Like when you've got the whole grunge-lite Barbie Doll thing going and you need to balance it out. Or you keep name-dropping stuff other people think is important, like Bergman film references or obscure stories by J.D. Salinger, without demonstrating any personal connection to it."

"Ignorance."

"Ignorance is when someone talks a lot about something they know nothing about. Like, you want people to take you seriously without doing your homework. So you say you like Ringo, but the only song you can think of is Octopus' Garden, which is a decadent fairy-tale written near the end of the Sixties trip, and not something like Matchbox, which addresses real loneliness and real poverty and connects to the working-class roots of the Beatles themselves."

Tom frowned. "Matchbox?" He'd never heard the song.

"Go home, Brandon," the Brain said. "I mean Tom. Listen to Past Masters Volume I. Listen to Matchbox. I think it'll help you to put your relationship with Summer in perspective."

Tom went home, and listened to the Beatles' cover version of Carl Perkins' Matchbox. It was a revelation. The words were so . . . basic. It wasn't all sensitive and emotional; in fact the guy in the song really seemed to cool to care. Yet somehow the song said everything he'd ever wanted to say to Summer, and said it with dignity and class.

Days later, there was a fancy party. Summer had broken up with him, but she invited him just to show what a cool, caring person she was. Tom showed up with an attitude.

"Hey, Summer," he called. "Ringo's best song wasn't Octopus' Garden. It was Matchbox. You'd know that, if you weren't just faking your knowledge of classic rock."

"Oh, yeah?" Summer asked.

Tom nodded. "Yeah."

"Oh yeah?" Summer was getting mad.

"It's an early song," Tom explained. "You actually have to like the Beatles to know about it."

"Oh, yeah?" Summer was really losing it.

Tom grinned. "There's a thesaurus in the library. Yeah is under Y."

"I hate you! I always hated you! I just got off on making you obey me and do tricks . . . like a dog!" Summer was rabid. Her new boyfriend was already on the way over.

Tom grinned, glad trouble had found him. "And when your big dog gets here, watch how your puppy dog runs."

He felt like crap after he left the party. Not because the bitch hated him. Not because her new boyfriend had just beat him up. It was the sick feeling of knowing that he had taken part in an enormous lie, an obscene phone call disguised as a Valentine's Day card. Did anyone really think his sad, twisted story was romantic? Or did they just pretend to think so to avoid confronting their own rage? People were angrier than ever these days. Yet they were more afraid of being alone than they were of living a lie.

Only Ringo was not afraid – Ringo, the ugly, stupid Beatle who refused to sing love songs, who refused to be anything but what he was.

_I got news for you baby, leaving here in misery._

Tom forced himself to walk tall, all the way home. He tried to pretend he was Ringo . . . or a teen-age detective in an ultra-cool independent film that no-one had ever seen.

_A/N: If you want to see Jo__seph Gordon Levitt in a really good movie, by all means rent a film called BRICK._


End file.
